


Summer of Sam

by zinjadu



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher, Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam gets kidnapped, and Dean ends up getting one Harry Dresden to help him out.  Written a while ago, rehosting here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer of Sam

“Wh-where am I?” Sam asked, then all of a sudden that question seemed silly. What did it matter where he was? He was warm and he felt safe and protected and happy. For the first time in a long time, he felt things he thought had died with Jessica.

“You are with me, dearest one,” came the answer from a soft female voice. His vision cleared to reveal a woman beyond beauty, beyond mortal man’s comprehension for simple aesthetic. She was beauty personified. She was warm, he could feel it radiating off of her, surrounding him and cocooning him. Long white hair, not platinum blonde, but white and it looked so soft that he reached out a hand to touch it, but she forestalled him with a simple touch of her hand.

“No, no not yet, dear child. My most precious child.” She smiled and Sam wanted nothing else than to bask in the glory of that smile; red lips and perfect teeth, and her green eyes danced with a sensuous light. “Sleep, Sam. Sleep and I will wake you when it is time.”

He closed his eyes and drifted.

Though some small part of him railed and shouted at him to awake, he did not listen. He was gone.

++++++++++++++++++++++

“Look,” the guy said, “I don’t particularly like having to come to you, but I don’t have another option. Word is that you’re the one to talk to when faeries are involved, and I got a faerie problem.”

“Yeah?” I asked, giving him his attitude right back. Sometimes, I wish everyone who needed my help would be just a little bit nicer about it. I mean, I don’t have to be such a good guy and help the world out by loaning out my services as professional wizard, but I do cause I’m that kind of guy. And the thought of not using the power I have to help people kind of goes against the job description now.

“Yeah.” The guy was a tough one. That much was obvious to me after only a few seconds. He walked in, all tall and broad shouldered like he owned the place—though I should point out he isn’t as tall as me—with a chip on his shoulder, like he was talking to a plague victim. Not many people liked talking to wizards.

“Alright, then. Mr…” I fished.

“Winchester,” he supplied.

Well, that was a surprise. Not many hunters registered on the radar for wizards. I did my best to keep tabs on the ones that based themselves out of my city, and check for any that were passing through on a hunt, but none of them came close to the legend of the Winchester family. You heard me. Family. Near damn miracle the boys are still alive, from what I understand. Mom dies in a fire. Dad goes nuts, finds out there’s all kinds of nasty in the night and that one of those nasties torched Mom. Raises the kids on the road, teaching them the trade and the know how. Now he’s dead. Word of John Winchester kind of precedes him. That and I suspect someone from the White Council taught him a few tricks that he couldn’t have found otherwise.

“You know, Dean. It’s Dean right? Your family is passing famous with some of the magical crowd. Mostly the hedge-witches and the like, but they know you. And you could have saved yourself and me a lot of trouble if you’d just told me you were a hunter right off.” I gave him a small grin, hoping to lighten the mood and get him to relax by a fraction.

“Hey, I don’t care if you know my whole life story.” So much for that idea. “But I got a problem and your add says you fix problems. That and someone told me it’d be a good idea to talk to you.”

“Who?” I asked, leaning forward. I liked to know where my referrals came from, out of professional courtesy you understand. That and a lot of not-people want me dead and every once and a while they like to set me up to die. I think they concoct wild schemes on long, boring evenings with no one to kill or eat, like it’s a kind of party game and whoever has the best idea gets to use it.

Hey, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean everyone isn’t out to get me. They are. Several people have told me so on many separate occasions.

“Mac, at that pub,” he answered and I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d given Mac a set of my business cards to hand out to people he thought could use my help. Saved a few lives that way, so I kept him in good supply. That and anyone who Mac had referred to me had to be on the up and up. No one dared mess with him. I think they know they’d be committing an atrocity to deprive the world of his micro brews and steak sandwiches.

“Alright, then you better sit down and tell me what’s going on. And be clear, please. Faeries make my head hurt just by thinking about them.” I gestured to the one chair that was opposite my desk, which he took. He got a look on his face for a second like I didn’t know what he was going to do, and I’m pretty good at reading people. He looked, not here, far away and angry all at the same time. Made be feel kind of bad for the guy. He was proud, didn’t like asking for help, and didn’t like me on my side of the fence either. Most hunters hated the wizards they knew. Holy knights and churchmen were alright, but they didn’t know what to do with someone like a wizard, who flung around massive power that seemed without any source. Made most of them jumpy, but whatever was going on with Dean, it was enough to make him overcome that natural prejudice.

That did not mean I liked the guy.

“Wish I had more to tell you, but Sammy and I, that’s my brother.” I nodded. I’d heard about Sam as well. “We were coming off a hunt, decided to stop here for the night as we were passing through. In the motel one night and then I wake up and Sam’s gone. Didn’t take his stuff, didn’t take his phone. Nothing.”

“And what makes you think faeries did this? Other things are more likely to target hunters. Faeries generally leave your lot alone.”

“There was dust all around the motel.” He held up a vial of dust that sparkled as if it contained gold. I took it.

“Faerie dust? You think someone in faerie would be so sloppy to leave dust when they take someone? Not the kind that would have an interest in taking mortals, anyway.”

“Nope. I figure the ones that took Sam were just little guys, the guys that do leave dust and don’t much care if they do. Whoever sent them had to. Needed to charm Sam out of the room before they could take him.”

I thought about it. Some of the more powerful Sidhe have a hard time staying unnoticed on this plane of reality. They can make themselves unnoticed, but I’m sure something that powerful showing up would trip some alarms the boys would have set up to make sure they aren’t killed in their sleep. But the little guys. The little guys are everywhere and if you have your alarms set that sensitive, you’re never going to get any sleep anyway. Charmed out of his bed. Damn. That’s a classic.

“What I don’t get,” Dean said looking at me like that if he kept hitting me up for answers they might just fall out like candy out of a piñata. “Is why Sam? What’s in it for them if they have him?”

“Well, there’s always the classic strengthening of the blood by introducing some mortal genes. Friend of mine has a theory that the Faerie gene-pool is slowly shrinking, especially among the Sidhe.”

“They want Sammy as a stud?” he blurted, nearing laughing. “Well damn if that isn’t insulting.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

“You don’t want that kind of action. They’d use you until there wasn’t anything left. Probably die from a heart attack from the strain.” He shrugged, as if saying it’d be a good way to go. “But I don’t think that’s the reason.”

“No? Why not?”

“If they wanted him for breading stock, there would have been more missing people by now. The pretty, the talented, the smart. Faeries only want the best. When attractive musicians start disappearing, then I know we’re in trouble. Until then, I doubt we’re looking at that kind of scenario.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. You tell me,” I pushed. I might not be all that hostile toward Dean, but I could tell there was something he was keeping from me. Something big, and he was used to keeping things from people. If I wasn’t trained to notice things like that, I would have missed it. “Is there anything about Sam that might make someone as powerful as a Sidhe want him?”

“No,” he said a bit too quickly. “Nothing at all.”

I sighed inside. “Alright,” I said, getting up and pulling on my duster. It was just turning to fall and I was happy that it was starting to cool down again to the point where I could wear the thing without collapsing from heat stroke, or looking like more of a freak than I already do. “Then we better hit the street and figure this one out.”

++++++++++++++++++++++

“He’s awake again, mistress,” he heard, this time it didn’t sound nearly as sweet as the first person who’d spoken to him. He sat up, trying to clear his head. It felt fuzzy and like he was trying to think through cotton.

“Where am I?” he asked blearily.

“With me, and that is all that matters, sweet child,” the woman from before said. Sam could feel his brain trying to accept the answer and deny at the same time, and he managed to focus on something long enough to keep her out of his head.

“And who are you?” he demanded, feeling his strength return. He needed to keep pressing her or she could get back in his head. He figured it out quickly; he’d been taken by Faeries, and now just needed to figure out who had stolen him.

“Why, dear child,” she said archly. This conversation clearly pleased her, if the expression on her face was anything to go by. “I am Titania.”

Sam scrambled backwards, patting himself down to find something he could use against them. Anything iron. But he came up empty. Confusion and horrible understanding played across his face.

She laughed, silvery and perfect. A laugh calculated to entice and delight. Sam only felt his stomach drop out.

“No need to fear me, child. I need you alive, intact and in full possession of your faculties. I will not harm you, nor will I permit you to leave. Since you seem to have overcome the sedative, I do not think it would be wise to continue to drug you.” She gave him one last lingering look, appreciative but overall more like a lady looking at her prized champion fighter than anything else, then she turned to leave in a swirl of warmth.

“What do you want from me?” Sam choked out. He was angry at himself. Normally better able to handle pressure, but he had just been kidnapped to Faerie, without even a scrap of iron on him. He mostly blamed the lingering drug haze.

“That,” she purred, grinning like the cat that caught the canary, “should be obvious, Sammy.”

Then she was gone.

Sam frowned. He took in his surroundings: tall trees covered with leaves so green he could barely believe it, the equally green grass dappled by the sun and shade, and the air smelled of summer and sun and unending lazy contentment. Off in the distance he could hear a babbling brook, and closer he could hear birds, though he knew they were probably other Faeries, small folk who were like as to Titania as birds were to humans.

The only course of action left to him, then, was to explore and figure some way out of here. If he could out smart the Faeries, they’d have no choice but to let him go. They were famous for their bargains and actually keeping them. He just needed to figure out what Titania wanted, and what he could give her in exchange for his freedom.

Yeah. Simple.

++++++++++++++++++++++

“Dude, what are we doing out here in the middle of the night? It’s getting cold,” Dean complained. I didn’t think he was really cold, he just didn’t like things that he didn’t understand.

“Like I said, we’re calling up some friends,” I told him and set about to getting the bait ready. He raised an eyebrow as I took out the pizza and set it on the ground; he’d complained a bit about that one, he liked food this Dean guy did. Though instead of my usual circle, I’d been doing something a bit different with Toot lately. I’d been asking him. I whispered out his name and asked him to meet me, and sent a mental waft of pizza out to him.

He got here faster than anything.

“Heya, Toot,” I said.

The Faerie looked up at me, thoroughly happy and content. “Hello Harry Dresden!” he squeaked. I’d slowly learned that bribing people went a lot better than strong-arming them. Hey, even I can learn the basics of diplomacy given enough time.

“Need a favor, Toot.”

He nodded. They liked my regular donations of pizza and somewhat considered me their lord, the small folk of the area. As long as I kept up the pizza supply, I had the most loyal band of tiny informers any wizard could ask for.

“Kid got taken by some small folk for one of the Sidhe. Got a piece of his clothing here for you to ping off of. Think you can find out who ordered the snatching?” I held out a sock, which Toot grabbed and sped off. I looked back at Dean, who had watched the whole thing with guarded surprise. He didn’t have to like what I did, but I was hoping he would at least start to respect it and not consider me barely one step above the monsters he hunted. It would just make my life easier, really.

“He really can find Sam?”

“Or at least who took your brother. Toot’s the most informed Faerie in all of Chicago. I don’t know how the little guy does it, but he is.” I shrugged and we waited in silence for Toot to return.

He came back in about an hour, streaking toward us like a tiny comet. That had me worried right away. Toot normally likes to dangle information in front of me and get more pizza out of it, but if he was in a hurry that meant this was big. I started to get a bad feeling about this.

“Harry Dresden! Harry Dresden!” his tiny, high voice called. “Bad news. Oh bad news!” Toot stopped just short of my nose, and I noticed that he’d lost the sock along the way. “The warm lady has him!”

“Lily? She wouldn’t take mortals, Toot. She might be the Summer Lady, but she’s still too new to be that far gone.”

“No, her mother.”

Shit. And things got that much worse.

“What’s that mean?” Dean shouted.

“It means that Titania has your brother, and I don’t know if I can get him back.”

“Why not? Heard you can really kick Faerie ass.”

“That’s because I was lucky last time! I had an ally who could help me, but she won’t touch this one. Not for anything. And Mab. Mab won’t help me, not for this,” I started thinking out loud. I kept the litany of foul language to myself. I didn’t want Dean to know how damn hopeless this was. Titania had Sam, for some reason that I could figure out and Dean wouldn’t tell me, and there’s no way I could ever charge into Summer and take Sam back. Arctis Tor had been equal amounts planning, luck and somebody up there taking care of the Carpenter children. This had none of those elements.

“Dean,” I said in my most reasonable voice possible, the one I’d heard Michael use when he was talking to his children. “Is there anything, anything about Sam that you aren’t telling me? If you don’t, you might never set Sam back.”

I dismissed Toot, who happily left, and I motioned for Dean to continue.

Dean sighed and looked everywhere but me. He was a good liar, but I’d read him right and he’d do anything for his brother. I’d know. I’d do the same for mine. I hated having to play that card, but damn it, I hated having to lose a case, no matter what was going on.

“Sam,” Dean started, stopped and then took a deep breath. “You gotta understand, this is the big family secret. This gets out and I find its cause of you, Mr. Wizard, I don’t care if you could blow me up by thinking about it, I will kill you.” He gave me a hard stare, and I met it, and I cursed. We’d looked at each other a bit too long and were pulled into a soulgaze. Sounds pretentious, but I don’t know what else to call it. When a wizard looks someone in the eyes, it literally is the window to the soul, and you see that person just as they see you. They see the core of you, and nothing will ever take that image away because you Saw it.

When I looked into Dean I Saw him. I saw an ocean, a calm still ocean that hid so much, and I dived under the water down into the darkness and I saw something else. A kraken, a monster of legend that would rise up and destroy everything if roused to ire one day. Destruction and hell to pay of infinite proportions if anything hurt his brother. An ocean of love, so wide and deep that I could hardly believe it, and it was all focused on one person, all for his brother, the only one he had left. And God help the idiot who harmed Sam.

The soulgaze ended, and unlike most people who Saw me, Dean didn’t seem shaken or upset. He just kept on staring. And I understood. When you only ever have one thing, you’d do anything for it. Dean had only ever really had Sam, and would never let him go. Ever.

“You have my word, Dean. I swear on my power, I won’t tell a soul about Sam,” I promised. Swearing on your power is a dicey business, but knew that Dean would accept no less.

“Sam’s got… these powers.”

“Like mine?”

“No, like psychic powers. He gets these visions, and sometimes he can move stuff. Like telekinesis.”

“And you don’t have these powers?”

“No.”

“Anyone in your family?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Okay, that’s something, but that’s not powerful enough for me to understand why Titania would kidnap him. There’s got to be something else.” I started to go back to my car, ready to start doing a bit more digging and bothering of Bob to figure out what might be so special about this Sam kid when Dean gave me another surprise.

“A demon.”

“What?”

“A demon. There’s other kids like Sam and they all have this yellow-eyed demon after them. He wants them cause they’re special. And. And they might go evil. Get corrupted by the demon. Turn into his soldiers for the coming war.”

Oh.

Well, suddenly everything made a lot more sense. Titania wanted Sam as her own, personal demon killer. A power of the demon subverted to her will. If she had the power of the Pit working for her, she’d be able to defend Summer from Outsiders. She’d also be able to conquer. Possibly have enough power to drive out Mab, to rise above the Wizards and everyone else. Too much power in the hands of one player tended to make the whole board tilt in their favor. For a while. Eventually a way would be found to cut her off of that newfound power and cut her down to size. Sometimes that literally happened. Don’t ask.

That and the demon might just come looking for his lost little boy. And if this demon could endow children with power, which meant it was powerful enough to possibly take on Faerie. Too much could go so very wrong with this little stunt of the Summer Queen’s.

Titania was playing with more fire than she knew what to do with.

Shit.

++++++++++++++++++++++  
He ran.

Out of options and other ideas, running seemed like the best idea at the time. Granted that had been at the time, and now here he was running for his life, not knowing where he was and the hounds of Titania right on his heels.

He needed to find a safe place to rest soon or he’d run himself to exhaustion and then she’d have him back in her clutches. And part of him really wouldn’t mind going back to Titania, where it was safe and warm, where he didn’t have to worry about Yellow-eyes or Dean getting hurt or anything like that. He grit his teeth and kept running through the wood, the trees getting creepier by the second and roots that seemed to do his best to trip him up.

He didn’t know how long he ran for, or how he lost the hounds, but suddenly everything was quiet. Going forward, out of a lack of any other ideas, he eventually came to what seemed to be a run down little hut in the middle of nowhere, with a curl of smoke rising out of the chimney. Creeping up to the edge of the clearing that surrounded the house, an old woman emerged and looked straight at him in his hiding place.

“You better come in, young man,” she said in a crackling voice. “It can be dangerous out there.”

He waited a moment, just to make sure that no one was compelling him, and then followed her inside.

++++++++++++++++++++++

“This was not a good idea!” Dean shouted at me as we charged through Summer, hounds on our heels.

“I know, but it’s all we could do!” I shouted back, hoping that we’d get to the one place even Titania and Mab wouldn’t dare to go. I was pushing my luck with this scheme, but we might just pull it off and get Sam out of here.

Then we crossed the boundary and the hounds broke off, whimpering and baying.

Dean laughed, but I pulled him with me, not wanting to spend one more second than necessary here.

The Mother’s cottage was up ahead, and I was hoping everything had worked out.

I knocked. Hey, when you need to talk to two of the arguably most powerful Faeries, you get polite real fast. The door opened to reveal Mother Summer, an old and withered looking woman with the last vestiges of beauty still clinging to her. The last time I saw her she had been wrapped up in a cloak, completely obscured and I couldn’t get a single glimpse of her. Now it was Mother Winter who was so wrapped while Mother Summer saw to the housework. Strange arrangement, but it seemed to work.

“Mother Summer,” I said, bowing and I checked to make sure Dean was doing the same. He was. The coaching I’d given him had been worth the aggravation.

“Come in, Harry Dresden. You too, Dean Winchester.” We entered and saw Sam sitting on a stool, looking a bit wide eyed but none the worse for the wear. “Your brother is unharmed. Titania did not know what she was doing, bringing one of the demon’s children here. I merely asked the boy to come see me.”

I let out a low whistle. The Mother’s never did much directly against the Queens and the Ladies, content to let things unfold with a nudge here and there, but this was close to a direct hand as I’d ever seen. Sam might have started running on his own, but Mother Summer was subtle enough to keep the hounds away from the boy and guide him to her, the Summer Queen none the wiser. At least for now. Titania might never have proof, but the signs would be clear enough to her. Hopefully, Mother Summer could talk some sense into her daughter.

“Now get him out of here,” Mother Winter barked from her chair. “His kind do not belong with us. A power we cannot harness, a power that taints.”

Sam came with us as we left Faerie, going out the back door to so speak. Whatever Sam was, not even the Faeries really wanted him around. That was bad mojo if I’ve ever heard of any.

I didn’t like it one bit.

But I couldn’t do much about it. Sam hadn’t done anything to anyone so far, and if Dean was honest about anything, it was that Sam was a good kid.

I’d just have to keep my eye on them and hope for the best.

I still made Dean pay cash. He grumbled a bit about that, but as he handed over the money I slipped him a couple of charms. Little things that won’t show up on anyone’s radar, but it might just keep them alive.

They were good kids.

But I had a war on my hands, and I kept on discovering new sides and new players. I sighed. But I still had work to do.


End file.
